Read the title. Now read it again. Now mull it over.
I mean exactly what it says. Without a doubt in my mind, Horde has gotten steadily worse at PvP since the release of The Burning Crusade. Call it a misconception, call it what you will, but I have noticed, in my somewhat broad experience, that the ability of the Horde to actually play a battleground correctly has falled at a very steady rate since TBC went to retail.
I haven’t mentioned this before, because I thought it was a fluke. Maybe I was just accidentally in a battleground full of idiots. If this is the case… then I have accidentally been in a battleground full of idiots for 7 months.
Maybe it’s just the hard core battleground player in me speaking, but seriously… any Horde player who cannot write a one thousand word essay on the pro’s of holding lumber mill at all costs doesn’t deserve to be in Arathi Basin.
And before, it seems to me that people knew this. Horde knew the value of LM, would cap it and hold it. I cannot recall a single loss in Arathi Basin where it was not due to Alliance holding lumber mill, and the offensive mobility it gave them, that the horde defense was hopeless to stave off.
Dunno about you guys, but losing battlegrounds pre-70, for me, was a very rare occurence that could easily be considered once a month occurrences. I know it sounds extreme, but it really was. Losses were extremely few and extremely far between. You know those horror stories you hear about the endless ganking in the 59 bracket? Yeah, it was horde doing that ganking. Over, and over again. Or about that godly Tauren Warrior in the 49 bracket? The unstoppable juggernaut of Mortal Striking pain? My good buddy Nismofreak. Or maybe that ridiculously overpowered mage at level 69 who went around dominating everyone with Fireball, because there wasn’t any resilience around? That was me.
So, I hope you can understand, how when I turned 70, I was shocked and appalled to lose not one, not two, but FOUR Arathi Basins IN THE SAME DAY. It was mind boggling. I couldn’t understand it.
Following instinct ingrained on me since level 26, I rushed straight at lumber mill, and was stunned to find myself alone. I was very quickly dispatched, and while waiting to rez, saw that me fellow hordies had gone to… mine. The mine. They ignored Lumber Mill, the best node on the map, and went for Mine, the worst node on the map. At least they took farm, then blacksmith properly. Needless to say, Alliance capped lumber mill, and was freely attacking both blacksmith and farm for the rest of the game. Well, not the rest of the game. Until horde lost those two nodes because idiots were trying to cap stables.
And I have seen this exact pattern repeated over and over again. I need to stress this. OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
With the exception of two losses, Horde was annihilated because they failed to take lumber mill, and simply let Alliance have it. I’ve seen it enough times to have it memorized:
The game starts.
Horde splits into two groups running past farm. A hefty amount go to Blacksmith, some go to Mines, and one or two poor fellows go to Lumber Mill, get slaughtered, and wonder where the rest of the Horde are.
The people who go mine cap it, then make endless failed attempts to cap stables.
The people who went Blacksmith also attempt to rush Stables.
A very large horde force arrives at Stables, fails to cap it, and ends up rezzing back at either mines or blacksmith again. If they rezzed at mine, they attack Stables again. And fail. Again. And so on.
The Blacksmith rezzers then spend the rest of the game trying to fend off both farm and blacksmith from the endless lumber mill based alliance attacks. Whic, of course, they eventually fail to do.
And then we lose, often to a four cap, just barely holding on to either mine or farm.
This is all because the Horde have forgotten how to play Arathi Basin. It seems by battlegroup is made up of endless streams of idiots who honestly think that “zerg stabs” is a sound strategy. These are also the people who inevitably type out “u ppl suck” when the defenders at farm (all two of them) get swept away by a zerg from lumber mill. Which could have easily been prevented if the defenders at blacksmith had joined in. Which, of course, is impossible, because those defenders don’t exist, being too pre-occupied with trying to cap stables.
And, oddly, its only gotten worse. When I first hit 70, the battlegrounds I was in were still victorious the vast majority of the time.
Then…. they weren’t. By about November, I was seeing the ‘Horde Wins’ thing about half the time. In late December, Horde was winning about 1 in 4 battlegrounds. Now here I am, starting up February, and I win about 1 in 20 battlegrounds. I haven’t been in a winning battleground since January 27th.
Its Arathi Basin weekend this weekend. Or, it was. As I write this, I have yet to win an AB.
Hold on, lemme go do another….
Got 5-capped by Ysera. Horde zerg went to mines. Capped mines. Got pinned in mines. Got slaughtered in mines.
Lets do one more!
Got 5-capped by a PICK UP GROUP. Me and a hunter from Black Dragonflight went to lumber mill. We killed all 5 alliance there. Capped it. Held it for a good 3 minutes before 12 alliance came crashing down on us. Guess where the rest of the Horde went? Beats me, when I looked at the minimap, there were 12 horde waiting to respawn in the starting area.
Oh, well, better luck next year. Hopefully Horde will remember how to PvP by the time WotLK hits stores everywhere.
Now taking bets on how many Arathi Basins I lose in a row before I get a win.
So far up to 37… 38*
I don’t think it’s the not capping LM that causes the loses, it’s the stable zerg. I have played many ABs where we’ve won even though we didn’t have LM. It also depends on your battlegroup. In mine Horde almost always win AB, WSG and EoTS.
I would say that the one node that gives the most offensive advantage is BS as you have quick access to all the other nodes. Having said that I wouldn’t capture BS at the expense of other nodes.
Anyway there are a lot of different ways to play AB that’s part of what makes it fun.
I just posted on my blog about AB weekend too, but I was having a QQ about Alliance losing hehe! I do have to say though that I have noticed a tendency in some ABs for the horde to ignore LM and do exactly what you describe above. LM is always the first thing I go for. Taking the higher ground is always considered a good strategy in any battle situation amirite?
Rest assured though there are just as many idiots on Alliance side
You should come to my battlegroup, where us Alliance have pretty much resigned ourselves to a life of losses.
I didn’t venture into AB at all this past weekend, mostly because I’ve got the 100 marks of honor sitting in my bank and I hate having more wind up sitting in my mailbox, but trust me when I say that those 100 marks of honor took at least 90 games to get. Which should tell ya something =P
How to win in Arathi Basin
Following the article on CriticalQQ, I’ll take the opportunity to talk about strategy in Arathi Basin, since the most obvious reason beyond gear and class mastery for repeated losses in battlegrounds is lack of knowledge.
Hm. I would argue that it is, usually, blacksmith that is key. Either mine or lumber mill will work, although lumber mill is preferable. It is the zerging of stables that kills the Horde, as holding three is viable, but as much as I love a good two-man rogue stealth stable-cap, generally it’s five idiots dying at stables.
I have noticed the same thing. Where have we gone wrong? When the cap was 60 we would be foolish to do anything but AB. We killed at it. I have not noticed the lm thing, but the zerging stables is amazing to me. Are we really expecting to five cap gentlemen? Is st so vital that we don’t need the other 4?
UGGHH…
The attacks on stables I saw this weekend rarely even qualified as zergs. More like ten guys attacking on they’s own, one after another. And promptlies getting killed, one after the other, like Wheat Thins.
The other “strategy” I saw this weekend were “run up and down the road or the riverbank for no apparent reason”. The hey?
It were a disheartening weekend. Only wins were when Alliance managed ta steal our playbook and follow it even betters than us. /sigh
Well, thinking about it over and over, maybe it’s overconfidence that killed Horde’s ability to win an Arathi Basin. As brad says, we used to rule that thing. And back to those times, 5-caps wins happened.
Perhaps a lot of Horde players are still behaving like they were still effortlessly dominating that battleground.
Or maybe it’s a widespread tunnel vision epidemic, who knows ?
heehee, aw, you’re making me pine for pvp again
*fires up skype convo to jill* all better! daaahahaha! eat it bitch! ive got a girlfriend and a garunteed lifetime of happyness! enjoy your HKs!
*i wanna do arena :’( *
vox out
Seems like all of these comments are from the Horde perspective.
From an Alliance perspective I *AM* seeing more wins. However, I attribute that to the Arena more than anything.
Pre-TBC no one would PvP as a healer. OK, so “no one” is an exaggeration… but in 5 BG matches would be lucky to find 3 healers.
Arena has people spec’d to heal. And people willing to heal.
There have been strategy changes but I think it’s both sides. I see Horde go for the ST more often now than before… and I also see Ally go for the Farm more often than before.
I think lots of opening strategies can be successful. The important thing is to not get left alone. While I appreciate the idea of valliantly charging to what might be the best node strategically. It fails to be so if the rest of your team, n00bs or not, fails to come along with you. I think the key is to stick together, especially at the start and try to coordinate your initial rush to two main nodes. LM or otherwise… go as a unit.
It must be a battle group thing. The only wins I see(alliance) in BG’s these days come from AV or a well geared pre-made. It can be frustrating to have to sit through 7 crushing defeats to get my daily complete. One thing I can say about strategy is that we don’t loose because of which flags are taken. We lose because the horde in our BGs work well together. When we attack a flag with one or two horde on D, 6 more will show up in less than 60 seconds to bail them out. Alliance, it seems, can’t even spell teamwork.
OMG… You are obviously very narrow minded.
90% of the time Alliance don’t win AB
75% of the time Alliance don’t win WSG
70% of the time Alliance don’t win EOTS
NOW because of a fucking gay patch
60% of the time Alliance don’t even win AV!
You think you have it bad????
doh
Judging from what I hear from commenters and other bloggers, this kind of thing changes greatly from battlegroup to battlegroup.
The idea of this post wasn’t to highlight the alliance side of the fight. Having never played alliance past level 16, I cannot say I have any real knowledge of that side of things.
The point here was the level of intelligence of Horde, and their ability to effectively play battlegrounds, has dropped remarkably in comparison to where they were at before Burning Crusade came out.
Glad I read this. I mean yeah the high ground is key, but I never really thought about it.
I hate you horde beotches. I’ll have to spread this news around as much as possible. Maybe we can start winning again for god’s sake. I’ll tell you a secret though about why your losing though, coming from a sociology major: Demographics.
Since TBC, you got the inclusion of a new, human resembling avatar: the Blood Elf. The reasons why horde typically win is based on the fact you have fewer people. Closer knits, and etc. Most younger people go for avatars that look more like them. Since TBC, you’ve had an influx of players trying to look like that generally cool looking Blood Elf, and now being that they are horde, they are starting other horde toons despite their general uglyness.
Younger players, more inexperience amongst the ranks, more people meaning less cohesion. Do the math. Now maybe you can feel some alliance pain for a change. Mofos.